Pantsuit Envy

This one is sure to get me in trouble with some, but here goes. It happens that whenever I read, wherever I get my news, there are gobs of articles about women seeking equality or protesting their tribe as oppressed and suppressed in society. For me it is actually sad that this taxonomic category has taken root. For all the historians, God has categorically made man and women different for many reasons. Equal pay for equal work is not exclusivily a feminist category. “Reproductive rights” is not solely a womens issue, ordinarily it would be called a moral issue. Women’s sufferage is over. As far as I know the right of women to vote in elections changed a hundred years ago. So, to me, at the heart of this radical, white pant suit, backlash is envy and more kin to the exploits of Cruella than Cinderella.

If we look at people, male and female, as individuals created for the glory of God we will see that each of us is given talents, abilities, and traits not only specific to gender but more likely specific to the purposes of God. As a man I do not expect to get paid more than a harder worker. I don’t expect jobs better suited to others to be granted me because I’m a man. I expect that I’ll get chosen because I’m better liked, better qualified, that I have a more famous reputation, or that I will be a better “fit” to the goals and culture of the organization. Sure, opportunities should not be given based on race or gender alone (sexuality is a whole different matter). For instance, let us take “social equality.” It’s a term often associated with feminism. Feminists believe in “social equality for women.” Sounds good right! But what is “social equality?” What does it mean for a woman to be socially equal to a man? You see the problem is definitional. If it means a woman should have the right to make the same amount of money for the same work generally, well that’s true. But if she thinks her talents are equal to a man’s just because she is a woman, well that’s subjective. It will always be subjective and she is envying a position she has no right to own solely based on her gender.

I remember playing college football at a major university in the 1970’s, about the time when feminism was taking root, and one day the coaches came in and said, “men, that’s what they called us, not the boy’s that we were, “today there will be women reporters in the locker room, you better mind your manners, get dressed quickly and for God’s sake if you’re coming from the treatment rooms wear a towel.” The whole thing did not seem fair! It was our locker room, a man’s sanctuary. Of couse it was unfair that male reporters had access to the players when the women did not. But the solution was not to give women access, it would have been better, in my opinion, to give both genders access after we showered and after we were dressed. But in this case feminism won the day. From that forward the agenda seems to have gotten more radical.

Today the whole solidarity issue would be wonderfuly accepted if women were celebrating their feminity and giving glory to their creator. I say give them their own locker rooms, their own identity. But when the solidarity becomes a political issue for dividing and conquering the man cave, that’s going a bit far.

As for all the articles, lighten up ladies. If you can run as fast, jump as high, and take the hits like a man you can be on my team. If you can sell as much, think as fast, and make decisions suitable to those in charge you’re hired. But if you think showing off white trousers in solidarity at the State of the Union is making the case for equal access to a man’s world it’s not. If at the State of the Union, the congresswomen, again, wear white pant suits it will certainly distinguish them from the congressmen, it will symbolize and expose their holy garments as hypocritical. They will display the personal, expensive, privilege of their own careers, while maliciously bemoaning the idea that others, unlike themselves, are incabable doing quite well under patriarchy; they will covet the qualites of men (and votes), while denying the liberty of being wonderfully made a woman.